Papadums and Little Bears

I'm baaaaack.
Didja miss me?

I had a nice relaxing weekend up at the lake. The new and improved cabin is not much bigger, but the ceiling is higher and Dad put in tonnes of windows so it seems huge. There's also a new couch...really nice. A step up from our usual garage sale stuff for sure. It's nice to see my Dad doing something for himself - he's always doing stuff for other people.
It rained all friday and saturday so I had a leisurely time helping my Mom. With her heart, she has to take it easier than before (and she hasn't quite gotten the hang of it yet), but I helped her pace herself and hang up all the pictures back on the walls all over the cabin (and YES we measured first...every man who came over on saturday to the cabin that afternoon said "looks good, are you sure it's straight -did you measure to be sure?"...grrr. Yes women can do these things too!). Mom and Dad had a bunch of their friends over for a barbecue saturday night so I helped out Mom again and then relaxed drinking wine by the fire and smelling pipe tobacco. Dad's taken up the pipe again and I love the smell of pipe smoke. J got to be all manly and help out my Dad lay some laminate floor at a friend's cabin for part of the day so he was kept busy in the rain too. There was many a scotch and cigar to be had at the end of the day. Pretty good life I figure - retirement seems like a sweet deal.
The sun even came out sunday so J and I could take a 2 hour hike around and then sit and drink beer and talk with my Dad and his friends while they took a pipe break from working.
One of the amusing things from the trip is one of Dad's friends (the one with the cabin that J was helping at) has remarried recently to a really cool lady he met in BC. She's lived mostly in Victoria and Vancouver so she's pretty outspoken and "modern" as my Mom would say. She brought papadums to supper saturday night - I like this lady already. Add to that her being a vegetarian who likes irish ale and all the old farts at the lake are amused - she said it is funny how many people have "stopped by" for no reason just to get a glimpse of Ray's "odd" new wife. I think she's awesome and sure makes it more interesting for me up there as a break from the slow pace of most of my parent's friends.
I never thought I'd be eating papadums and chutney on the deck at the lake.
Yummy.